Measuring the Gains

I spend hours and hours stitching lines and back and forth. While I totally enjoy silence much of that time – I also use the time for entertainment and learning by listening to audio books.

I’m currently listening to the book The Gap and the Gain and having many of my practices confirmed as great ways of keeping a positive mindset – such as writing an annual 100 Accomplishments List – and asking the MakeBigArt community members to check in with a celebration each week.

The premise is simple – always measure our progress by looking to the past to see the gains we have made. Instead of focusing on where we fall short – we are much happier and successful when we notice how we have grown and what we have accomplished.

This isn’t new information – we all know that comparisons to others and unrealistic ideals are a recipe for unhappiness and discouragement. The authors call focusing on where you fell short “the gap” vs recognizing the accomplishments “the Gain.”

Experiencing in the Gap

Lately I had the unfortunate chance to measure my Art Practice against an unrealistic ideal.

In November I exhibited my work at the Dunedin Art Show and I sold absolutely nothing. Definitely not a fun experience. It can cause an artist to tailspin when that happens. And I had more than a few moments of thinking my art practice has been going backwards since moving to New Zealand.

Fortunately I didn’t get stuck there very long. I know that measuring the gains is the antidote to what I was feeling.

When looking realistically at the situation – the timing of the show wasn’t good. The current covid situation has created a lot of uncertainty in New Zealand.

And while I can chalk up some of my results to the current situation – there is work to be done on my part.

Making the Experience a Positive by Measuring the Gains

I’ve turned the experience into a positive by reviewing how things went. I now have some very clear action items to ensure a better outcome at my next show.

Focusing on the gain. And the gain in this event was the learning. It was a good thing that things didn’t go well as it was time to step up my game. Without these bad results, I wouldn’t have the new clarity for my next year of my art practice.

For example – I used to have a several information signs that I put up on the wall. This helped the audience understand my work.

And more importantly – it provided talking points. People would read the signs and then ask me questions about what they read.

The last few shows I’ve not bothered making new signs and since almost no other artists put up this sort of information, I got lazy and stopped doing it.

Without the signs – pretty much the only conversation starter from the audience was “that looks like it took a lot of time.” Which – yes – it did.

So next show – I’m back to making signs to help shift the conversation.

I also recognize that in doing the retrospective that I’ve made significant gains in my show preparation. For years my portfolio was out of date but I now have better processes and software. I can now generate labels and portfolio pages in minutes.

Now that I’ve reframed my experience as a positive (and the reminders in this book on how brilliantly focusing on the gains works) – I spend no time thinking about the event. I’ve moved on and am doing the work needed to move me forward.

The Growth in my Art Practice

I mentioned that when I was stuck in the gap. One thought that was circling in my brain was that I’ve stagnated in my art practice.

Fortunately I have my blog to help remind me of where I was so I can compare to where I am today.

As an example – the artwork show above – A Day at the Beach.

The first sign of growth – I now title my artwork with actual titles that give a better hint at what I was thinking about vs just giving them numbers. This used to be titled Structures #136.

The second gain I recognize is that I now finish my work in a more professional presentation.

I recently took this artwork and mounted it on to canvas. The result is more interesting texture and an artwork that is super easy to hang on the wall – as it is mounted on a stretched canvas and hangs like any painting.

I worked on my structures Series for almost 20 years and created 200 textile paintings in the series. I’m planning to take some of the remaining smaller works and transform them with this new approach to present them in a small exhibition. I still love this series, although it doesn’t exhibit well alongside my more complex Travel Patterns series.

And so I will no longer exhibit these work at the weekend art shows. Another gain from my review of the Dunedin Art Show. I really do want a more cohesive collection of work for sale at these shows.

PS – I wrote a blog post about this artwork nine years ago showing my creative process and how it evolved. You can check out it’s history in this post: The Evolution of a Textile Painting.

You can also read more about the Structures series in this review – written after I can completed 60 of the 200 pieces: Structures – The Series in Review.

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